Why does ChatGPT constantly lie? - by Noah Smith
I write about five articles a week. If I worked very hard, I could probably write ten. But what I really wish is that I could write 100 articles per week, discussing every interesting econ paper and piece of news out there in the world. The more my ideas get out there into the world, the happier I am. (Don’t worry, I wouldn’t send you 100 emails a week; I’d put the posts into a weekly digest.)
Realistically, the only way I’m ever going to be able to raise my productivity substantially is with the aid of artificial intelligence. Large language models like GPT-3 offer the hope that someday, chatbots like GPT will be able to write large portions of my articles, in my own style, incorporating my own beliefs and ideas, with my own level of understanding and analysis, and with only a little prompting, guidance, and editing from me. Other media outlets are thinking along similar lines — Buzzfeed recently announced that it plans to use ChatGPT to help create some of its content, and its stock rose on the news.
But so far, my attempts to use ChatGPT to help me write my own blog posts — which I will write about in detail at some point — have all ended in failure, for one simple reason: ChatGPT routinely spews out a lot of fake “facts”.
